


Graduation Day

by Ghost_in_the_Hella



Series: To All of You (prompt fills) [7]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Bae Ending, Prompt Fill, TFW almost everyone you care about is dead, pricefield, this got so angsty so fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23637778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghost_in_the_Hella/pseuds/Ghost_in_the_Hella
Summary: Max and Chloe are graduating from college. It's hard to feel like celebrating.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Series: To All of You (prompt fills) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656067
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Graduation Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HathorAroha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HathorAroha/gifts).



> HathorAroha/naturepointstheway prompted me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ghost-in-the-hella) with pricefield and "I'm proud of you, we all are..."
> 
> This got so angsty so fast, which is probably not what you were hoping for with that prompt... I hope you dig it anyway.
> 
> Not necessarily a direct sequel to my previous prompt fill (With You to the End of the Road), but I can see this taking place maybe a few years after that scene.
> 
> Content Warnings for: non-descriptive references to suicide/suicidal ideation, negative self-talk, PTSD, references to past physical and mental abuse, and implied anti-queerness.

It takes Max twenty minutes to realize that Chloe’s left the celebration and twenty seconds after that for her to realize where she’s gone. She makes her excuses to her family and friends - just a minute, be right back, gotta run to the bathroom, gotta check my makeup, gotta check on Chloe, thanks for coming, thanks so much, seriously Mom I’ll be right back - and starts walking across campus toward the art building. She turns on her phone as she walks and scrolls through the text messages that have come in since the graduation ceremony. There it is, buried under a stream of congratulatory texts:

**Chloe: g2g**

**Chloe: sorry**

Max pockets her phone and stares up at the art building. She can’t see Chloe from the ground - that’s kind of the main point of a secret hiding place - but if she squints she can just make out a thin trail of cigarette smoke curling up from the rooftop. She feels a small wave of relief wash over her. Chloe’s been a lot better lately about opening up to Max when she needs help, but sometimes when she suddenly goes missing Max still worries. If she’s hiding on the rooftop and smoking a cigarette, it means she’s still here.

It’s weird to walk through the art building and have it be empty. There’s always people around, normally: working in studios, hanging artwork in critique rooms, building sculptures in hallways, sleeping on the paint-stained couches that sag in odd corners of the building. Her key card still works for the studios, luckily; it’ll probably be deactivated in a few days, once she’s got all of her stuff moved out. The undergraduate studios - a series of loosely connected cubicles formed by moveable white walls - have mostly been cleaned out or at least packed up. Chloe’s studio, all the way in the back corner, is still a mess; the boxes they brought in to pack up their supplies are still empty and scattered around. Max slips into the odd space they found the semester Chloe got her studio, a gap between the moveable wall and the actual wall, where there’s a door that’s supposed to be kept locked but that Chloe figured out quickly how to jimmy open.

Max hated the rooftop hideout for the first few weeks after Chloe showed it to her. Too many bad memories. Even though the spot is nestled between bulky vents and Max would have to climb up on top of them to look down over the campus, just the act of climbing up stairs to a rooftop made Max’s chest close in on itself. Even after Chloe made it into a home away from the dorms for them both, a special place for them to get away from the pressures of school and life, Max couldn’t go up there if it was raining. Rain makes it too easy to remember another rooftop, another time, another girl who wanted so badly to escape.

But it isn’t raining today, and Max has to admit that after nearly a year of hanging out up there it really bears no resemblance to the roof at Blackwell. Every spot that Chloe can reach - and with her long limbs she can reach quite a lot - is covered with her graffiti, spotted here and there with the marks that Chloe nudged Max into making herself (“C’mon, Max, nobody’s gonna see it; I bet no one even remembers this place exists!”). The rooftop is littered with cigarette butts (“The world is _not_ your ashtray, Chloe!”) and food wrappers (“There’s a trash can in the studios!” “Yeah, but there’s not one _on the roof_ , Max.”). 

And, of course, there’s Chloe herself. She’s swaddled in the blanket she normally keeps in her studio and stretched out on her back between vents, smoking a cigarette as she watches the clouds. It looks like she’s been using her mortarboard as an ashtray and her wadded up gown as a pillow. She glances over at Max as Max pushes through the roof door, and her eyes are bloodshot and watery. It doesn’t smell like pot up here (for a change), though, and Max’s suspicions are confirmed when Chloe quickly looks away and discreetly wipes at the corner of her eye with one hand.

“Hey,” Max says gently, closing the door behind her. She sits down next to Chloe, leaning her back against one of the protruding vents. It’s weirdly quiet with the art building shut down for the summer; usually the vents are pumping out all kinds of sounds and smells that are probably as bad for Chloe as smoking. 

“Hey,” Chloe replies, her voice soft and slightly hoarse. “Sorry I bailed, I just--” She waves her hand around abstractly, sending flecks of ash tumbling down onto her shirt. 

Max nods thoughtfully. “It’s pretty overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“Like… If someone says ‘congratulations’ to me one more fucking time, I don’t know, I just feel like I might… might _explode_ or something, you know?”

Max furrows her brows but doesn’t say anything. She tugs at the edge of the blanket until Chloe releases enough of it for Max to join her under it. She presses the side of her leg against Chloe’s, solid and reassuring, and she waits for Chloe to go on in her own time.

“It’s just… I don’t know. I expected it to feel different.” Chloe shrugs helplessly. “I expected to feel, I dunno, vindicated or something. Like, nobody thought I could do it; haha, showed you motherfuckers. But it just…” She sighs. “It feels hollow.”

“I knew you could do it,” Max says quietly. She doesn’t want to interrupt, but she also can never bear to let Chloe’s negative self-talk stand.

“Yeah… But everybody else down there, congratulating us and saying how proud they are and all of that crap… I mean, I’m sure they mean it for you; I’m fucking proud as hell of you, too, but--”

“I’m proud of you, we all are…”

Chloe finally stops cloud gazing and gives Max a dubious look. “Your parents are proud of me?”

“I-- Of course they are.” The words are sour in Max’s mouth, and she blushes under Chloe’s scrutinizing gaze. “They know how important you are to me,” she insists. That, at least, must be true: she’s told them enough times over the years, planting the knowledge as firmly into their minds as possible. They still don’t understand what Max sees in her, it’s true, and they still don’t really approve, but certainly they know that Chloe is in their daughter’s life and she’s not going anywhere if Max has anything to say about it. 

“Mm. Not really the same thing, though, is it?” Chloe flicks ashes into her mortarboard, keeping her eyes trained on Max’s. “And what about the rest of your family? Your grandparents? Your aunt and uncle? Your cousins? You think they’re all proud of me?”

Max loves her family, but she’s not as oblivious as she used to be. Even in the dream-like haze of graduation, she still noticed the glances her extended family - _and_ her immediate family - leveled at Chloe when Max introduced her as her girlfriend. Her grandmother looked like she was taking a swig of soured milk when Chloe shook her hand. Her uncle seemed fine on the surface, but she overheard him making some pretty offensive comments behind their backs. From the look on Chloe’s face, none of this went unnoticed by her. Max decides to switch tactics. “Our friends are proud of you. And _I’m_ proud of you.” 

Max reaches across the short distance between them and laces her fingers with Chloe’s. That nudges a small smile out of Chloe that feels like a huge accomplishment. The smile fades, though, and Chloe clears her throat. She crushes out what little is left of her cigarette and leaves it on the rooftop. “I, uh. I got a text from David earlier. Guess he was actually paying attention when I told him about graduating.”

“Oh,” Max says as neutrally as possible. David is always uncertain ground.

“Yeah. He, uh, he says he’s proud of me.” Chloe makes a sound halfway between a snort and a sob. “Like I give a fuck what he thinks, but still.” She starts picking at her already raw cuticles, and Max gives her hand a squeeze. “Like… he made my teen years a fucking nightmare. He treated me like shit and made me feel bad about myself, and he hit me a couple times, but he made my mom happy, you know?”

“That doesn’t excuse the way he treated you.”

“Yeah, I know, but… He _does_ care, in his own fucked up way…”

“He does,” Max agrees. “But that still doesn’t excuse the way he treated you.”

Chloe nods. “It’s just… He’s kind of all I’ve got left.” Her voice twists and she has to clear her throat before she can speak again. Max squeezes her hand again. “My dad always believed in me. He wouldn’t be surprised at all, y’know? He’d maybe be surprised I studied art instead of science, but I know he wouldn’t be disappointed. And he’d be proud as fuck. And my mom…” Chloe’s voice breaks again, and Max’s heart breaks a little with it. “My mom would’ve been surprised, probably. Ever since Dad died, I think she kinda gave up on me making anything out of myself. David didn’t really help with that, I guess. Fuck, _I_ didn’t really help with that. But she still would’ve been proud, I think.”

“She would,” Max assures her. “She definitely would.”

“And Rachel…” Chloe mops at her eyes. “She should’ve _been_ here!” she explodes suddenly. “She should’ve been right there _with_ us, getting her diploma and-and-and fucking hogging _all_ the cameras and charming everybody’s parents’ socks off because that was just-- it was just _the way she was_ ; it was just _Rachel_ ; and it isn’t-- it isn’t--”

Max slides closer to Chloe and puts her arms around her, letting Chloe sob into her shoulder. 

She doesn’t disagree. Rachel should’ve been there.

Kate should’ve been there, too. And Warren, and Dana, and Juliet, and Alyssa, and Daniel, and, hell, Victoria, Taylor, Courtney, Brooke, Stella, Evan, fucking everybody. They all deserved this. To finish high school, finish college, live their lives. She can’t say that out loud, though, not with Chloe already feeling this way. It wouldn’t make either of them feel any better, and it wouldn’t bring any of them back, so there’s no point in saying it. There’s only one way to bring any of the back, and Max won’t do it. She can’t. 

“It isn’t fair,” Chloe whispers into the crook of Max’s neck. “It isn’t fair.”

Max buries her face in Chloe’s hair. She smells like cheap hair dye and the cologne she put on this morning because “It’s a fancy occasion, Max!” and the cigarette she just smoked. Max breathes her in. “It isn’t fair,” she agrees. “But you deserve this, too. And I’m so, _so_ proud of you.”

Max’s phone buzzes in her pocket. Her family is probably wondering where she’s gotten to. They want to take her out for dinner to celebrate. Give her more congratulations, ask more questions about what her plans are now, scold her for not calling or visiting more often. Chloe sinks against Max’s shoulder, her sobbing fading into sniffles. Max kisses the top of her head and holds her tighter. She settles into the blankets and gazes up at the clouds, stroking Chloe’s hair.

Everything else can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to HathorAroha/naturepointstheway for the prompt and to all of you for reading! 
> 
> HMU on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ghost-in-the-hella) with more prompts, and please bolster my fragile ego with kudos and comments aplenty.


End file.
